One takeaway from a webinar yesterday on COVID-19’s effects on education: This epidemic’s face shifts from community to community. In some neighborhoods, families may not favor live instruction even though their school boards, mayors and governors are pushing hard for that instruction. COVID-19 looks scarier in poor neighborhoods, disproportionately neighborhoods of color. That’s because the illness and death rates in those areas are running higher, sometimes much higher, than state averages.

My thought: At least some mandated openings smack of presumptuousness and privilege. We are open where I live and I see the busses driving around my block. But many parents here are working from home. I documented a few numbers in a previous post showing how the ability to work from home increases with income. In this land of home ownership with three and four-bedroom houses, the snow plows come to clear driveways regularly. Whole Foods and other providers drop off food. Amazon trucks criss-cross the streets, carrying art supplies, and who knows what other items of interest. Cardboard spills out of recycle cans. In less snowy times, children are outside throwing basketballs through the hoops in their driveways. School superintendents live in this suburb.

I bet CDC officials often live in similar places.

Is it safe to open schools? Perhaps it has become safe enough, at least here in Illinois. We are vaccinating teachers as part of the second wave of shots.* But I am not sure that people who live in my suburb should be making decisions for families in poor and urban neighborhoods. However benevolently wielded, that use of power seems presumptuous.

Eduhonesty: Perceptions matter. If a kid is afraid to jump off the high dive, most responsible adults gauge that fear before trying to force that kid off the end of the board. I would encourage a nervous kid, provide more reassurance and support to a frightened counterpart — and I would let a genuinely terrified kid off the hook. High dives can always wait.

Maybe in-person instruction should wait where parents in a neighborhood do not favor that instruction. I hate to burden teachers, but I suggest we employ a model that opens schools with an option for remote learning. I also suggest we provide enough support to teachers so that the 2020/21 school year does not burn them out en masse.

No one should be forced off the high dive. At the same time, many financially struggling parents do need the childcare that school provides. No easy fixes exist for parents living in multigenerational homes who must go out to work.

Disturbingly, though, I am struck by the realization that school opening choices are being made for people based on “what’s good for them.” Who decides that? Using what criteria? Opening decisions may mean well and probably express true concern for children’s learning, but I cannot avoid a cynical fear that potential test score declines, in and of themselves, may be affecting opening decisions.

Few decision makers opening those school districts live in poor neighborhoods. Our mayors, superintendents and governors mostly have excellent insurance. Grandma may be living with them, but if any of those grandmas live near me, I have never met them. More often, grandma is living in her own home with a Life Alert button and visiting caregivers or even full-time help. She may be in an assisted living facility, one that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront for those lucky enough to secure a place.

As I listened to my webinar, I thought how parents in many neighborhoods did not WANT to send children into crowded classrooms. School openings have been slowed or stymied by students who simply did not arrive. From an article in “The New Yorker” (What’s at Stake in the Fight Over Reopening Schools | The New Yorker): “According to one recent study, only eighteen per cent of Black parents and twenty-two per cent of Latinx parents would prefer to send their children back to in-person schooling full time, compared with forty-five per cent of white parents. Over fifty per cent of Black and Latinx parents prefer to keep their children in remote learning.”

These re-openings drip privilege somehow, whether they are meant as well-intended rescues or not.

*About half of U.S. states have not prioritized teacher vaccinations, however.